Rating: 
Summary: Magic is alive, and that is not always pretty
Review: Charles de Lint has an amazing way of writing; I can only compare his style to Guy Gavriel Key, which makes me think that there is something truly magical in the waters up in Canada. When de Lint writes, you feel a strong tug at your deepest core; you know he is writing about a truth, even if you have yourself never seen balloon people -- they are true on a level beyond something seen on the news.Many writers currently seem determined to make faeries and other magical creatures very nice, very sweet, and altogether sappy. In these short stories we find nice creatures. We also find not quite so nice ones. We also find quite horrid ones, ones that would make our nightmares sit up and take notice. We find here the wellspring for artistic inspiration and the black void that leads to drug overdoses, the spirit of freedom and the freedom that goes too far and leads to madness. Here is hope, despair, and every other emotion, sometimes whispering, sometimes crying defiantly, but always with a sense that there is a truth here, no matter how much it may seem like a "mere fairy tale". This is an important point -- de Lint is writing about reality, about real lives, about real feelings, about real emotions. There is a touch of magic to this, from the woman who doesn't want to admit that she sees things others do not, to the man who falls too in love with a photograph. What de Lint is writing about is what makes us ourselves, whether that is very good or very not good; he writes about fears, lusts, emotional expression, distrust, scams, and dozens of other human activities with a passion and an honesty that few can match or manage. In the end these works may be seen as parables, as internal explanations, or almost anything else, but ultimately they are beautiful works, very poignant, and full of sadnss, beauty, joy, and fear. They are raw expressions of all that happens in our world, coloured slightly by a dusting of the fey and the careful tread of a coyote in his moccasins. Read, love, cry, and feel.
Rating:
Summary: Magic is alive, and that is not always pretty
Review: Charles de Lint has an amazing way of writing; I can only compare his style to Guy Gavriel Key, which makes me think that there is something truly magical in the waters up in Canada. When de Lint writes, you feel a strong tug at your deepest core; you know he is writing about a truth, even if you have yourself never seen balloon people -- they are true on a level beyond something seen on the news. Many writers currently seem determined to make faeries and other magical creatures very nice, very sweet, and altogether sappy. In these short stories we find nice creatures. We also find not quite so nice ones. We also find quite horrid ones, ones that would make our nightmares sit up and take notice. We find here the wellspring for artistic inspiration and the black void that leads to drug overdoses, the spirit of freedom and the freedom that goes too far and leads to madness. Here is hope, despair, and every other emotion, sometimes whispering, sometimes crying defiantly, but always with a sense that there is a truth here, no matter how much it may seem like a "mere fairy tale". This is an important point -- de Lint is writing about reality, about real lives, about real feelings, about real emotions. There is a touch of magic to this, from the woman who doesn't want to admit that she sees things others do not, to the man who falls too in love with a photograph. What de Lint is writing about is what makes us ourselves, whether that is very good or very not good; he writes about fears, lusts, emotional expression, distrust, scams, and dozens of other human activities with a passion and an honesty that few can match or manage. In the end these works may be seen as parables, as internal explanations, or almost anything else, but ultimately they are beautiful works, very poignant, and full of sadnss, beauty, joy, and fear. They are raw expressions of all that happens in our world, coloured slightly by a dusting of the fey and the careful tread of a coyote in his moccasins. Read, love, cry, and feel.
Rating: 
Summary: Mostly Beautiful
Review: Charles deLint has produced a third collection of short stories ( Dreams Underfoot & The Ivory and the Horn) set in his complex and lovely city of Newford. I have been a great fan of de Lint for about five years... and I have to be honest, with the exception of "Saskia," "Heartfires," "Twa Corbies," and a few others I was a little dissapointed. He evokes such wonder and magic from his stories that the reader is sucked into the world of Christy Ridell, and Jilly Coppercorn, or Geordie... For those of you who are just getting into de Lint, I suggest "Dreams Underfoot" and "Moonheart," or "Memory and Dream," This is something to be attained for us hard core fans. But beautiful nonetheless.
Rating: 
Summary: What Happened?
Review: Having been a De Lint fan for many years now, I found this collection to be just what I had been looking for in his previous works. The masterful blend of reality and the fantasic brings us back to a time when the veil between the mundane and the mystical seemed just a little bit thinner, when we could accept the mysteries of life and of magic without the desperate need to catorgorize them, file them away, and forget them. This novel seems to have a slightly darker feel than the others, incorporating lifestyles and beliefs just a shade outside of our own and letting us borrow them for a while, walk in their steps, and see through their eyes. The incorporation of the political overtones to his work serve as a poignant reminder of our responsiblity to the victims of our society. Overall, this book is a lovely collection which can be taken either as simply a charming set of stories, or as a well phrased wake up call to the issues we all face, directly or just as observers.
Rating:
Summary: A more diverse collection of Newford stories...
Review: I absolutely loved "The Ivory and the Horn," "Memory and Dream," and "Dreams Underfoot," and as a result, I scooped up a copy of "Moonlight and Vines" as soon as I saw it. In as much as this is a collection of Newford stories, it was another wonderful collection of the urban fantasy that lovers of DeLint flock to. Newford is a city where dreams can walk the streets, where the past and present can touch in rainstorms, and where graveyards can be the sanctuary for lost youth and innocence given form. This is a world where magic walks hand in hand with the reality of a city, in all its glory - and its uncaring. On a more personal note, I found that the Newford stories in "Moonlight and Vines" grew up. Not in a sense that these stories are about harder topics than previous books - for DeLint has not been shy about touching upon such difficult issues as child abuse, addiction, and the like. What I found was that the stories in this book more often figured older adults, not those on the edge of teenage years or the mid-late twenties, and also that the reappearance of the usual cast of characters (Jilly Coppercorn, for example) was not as prevalent in this collection. All in all, I loved it. I re-read all my Newford books, and it was only with slight regret that I didn't find Jilly and the others in this book as often as I'd like. Pick this up, (heck, pick all the Newford books up)! Canada's master of fantasy strikes again. 'Nathan
Rating:
Summary: A nice collection of short stories
Review: I was first introduced to Charles De Lint's short stories in other anthologies, and that spurred me to find one of his collections. The stories are well-crafted and introspective, although the author occasionally becomes a bit heavy-handed in getting his themes across. "Saskia," "The Big Sky," and "Held Safe by Moonlight and Vines" are memorable pieces in this anthology. _Moonlight and Vines_ is the first book I've ever read by this author, but I will go searching for others.
Rating:
Summary: Newford; A more somber collection
Review: I was glad to find a third collection of Newford tales, but still a bit dissapointed. The stories hit some deep emotional tones, and I even found tears streaming down my face at more than one part of this book. However, this didn't have the light-hearted flow of his previous Newford collections of short stories. It seems almost like DeLint set out to come up with a moral tone and it wasn't as enjoyable as the lighter, beat-of-the-town which I was expecting. Some of the ideas were a bit far-fetched as well. Even though I didn't care as much for it as the two previous Newford Collections, it's still good. His prose is well writen in a realistic, conversational way. His charachters put me back in a time of my wild, young, living-on-the edge days and remind me of people I used to know. I've moved to a more stable(ok, I'll admit, boring and full of responsibilities) lifestyle now and it's nice to remember my young, living on ramen noodles lifestyle with a romantic and magical edge that DeLint can infuse into his stories and charachters.
Rating:
Summary: What a find!
Review: I'm about 2/3rds of the way through this collection of stories and after most of the tales I think to myself, "That one was my favorite". Thank goodness they are short stories or I'd never be able to put this book down. This is my first book by de Lint, and my first exposure to "urban fantasy". I am delighted. It is almost Twilight Zonish- you feel that some of these things really could happen, and that they could even happen to you. As I've grown older I was moving away from the fantasy genre, but this has reawakened my love of magical possibilites. These are real characters, partially in a world I'm familiar with, touching on worlds I wish existed. I've already bought other copies for two of my friends. I highly recommend picking this one up.
Rating:
Summary: Another wonderful de Lint collection
Review: Someday, I'm going to pick up a Charles de Lint book and be disappointed. Really. So far, while I haven't been uniformly delighted with them, I've never found one I wasn't fascinated by to some degree. _Moonlight and Vines_ is no exception. It reaches out and entwines itself in your psyche, leaving you still finding bits of it in odd places for months to come. As does all de Lint, it speaks to some part of you that really does see the wonder behind the everyday facade.
Rating:
Summary: I read a LOT and this is the best book I've read in years.
Review: The young girl in "Pain Management" by Andrew Vachss is very involved with books by Charles de Lint. Vachss is a wonderful writer in many ways - one of which is that his characters listen to REAL music and REAL books. I followed Vachss's lead and bought (and fell in love with) Judy Henske, so I continued on, and bought a few de Lint books. I don't have the words to tell you how wonderful "Moonlight and Vines" is. That would be like my telling you that a baby's first steps are "wonderful." This is a collection of short stories whose characters continue to weave a delicate connection of lace from story to story. The city is the same throughout. It's a hard city filled with gentle souls. From "I envy the music that lovers hear," the first line of the first story, I was HOOKED. When I have time, I read a book a day. Please, look at the other books I've reviewed. I've read enough books to be able to base an opinion on what is good and what is bad. This, my friends, is the best book I have read in a long time. Best. Superlative. In our current scary times, it's wonderful to be able to escape to a place where everything sure isn't perfect, but where there are good people.
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